Title: The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses Vol. 6
Author: Koume Fujichika
Publisher: Square Enix
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 144
Genre: Slice-of-Life, Romance, Comedy
Publication Date: October 10, 2023
The Story
The sixth volume of The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses sees Mie and Komura get a little closer. It starts off with a questionnaire about what they want to be post-middle school. Mie says she wants to get married and it prompts Komura to say that he wants to be Mie’s husband but at the last moment, he chickens out and erases her name!
Next up is home economics so Mie ends up making cookies. Unfortunately, she doesn’t get paired up with Komura so he has to spend the entire class looking at her and Azuma together. Little does he know that Mie is making cookies specifically for him as well as putting a lot of thought into them!
Next, we get a bit of a longer story arc. It all started during the questionnaire story where she showed Komura a picture from her youth of what she wanted to be. Naturally, she didn’t have her glasses so she didn’t see that there was a picture of her as a little kid on there. Komura knew he wasn’t supposed to see that so he kept it secret. However, this prompted Komura to look through his photo albums and found a picture of him failing at a pull-up on the bars at the park. He showed it to Mie but she didn’t have her glasses and couldn’t see it well.
They end up visiting the park and having a cute time together; however, while brief, this wouldn’t be the last time we would see the park. Middle school is winding down and finally, it ends. Before they go on summer break, Mie and Komura head back to the park and have a bit of fun… then a really cute moment happens. One of Komura’s fears from earlier in the book is dispelled but it also prompts him to ask Mie a bit of a cute question to close out our volume.
Characters
It’s no longer a case of Komura and Mie starting to notice each other. The fact is… they are now well aware of each other and are starting to really come to terms with their feelings for one another; however, despite the realizations having settled in, they are too shy to pull the trigger on them. Still, I feel that a couple of small steps were taken here that brought them closer together.
For example, Komura noticed that Mie had run into an old classmate from elementary school but she admitted that she didn’t really remember his face because, naturally, she would often forget her glasses back then as well. This prompted Komura to worry if she would, one day, forget about him, too. Coupled with the fact that he desires to be Mie’s husband one day, you finally get the sense that he is fully aware of how he feels about Mie and what she means to him.
The same is true for Mie. Right before we close out the volume, on their second trip to the park, they get into pretty tight quarters and she asks to see his face up close. This time, she’s wearing her glasses so she can see it perfectly. She has it in her head that they won’t see each other over summer break so she wanted to make sure that she never forgot what he looked it. Plus, there were a couple of times when she caught herself thinking about him in ways that suggested that she was in love with him, too.
While small, these are still great steps to take in their development. We are at the halfway mark for this series so I don’t think that they are going to get together any time soon, though. I think the pacing for their development is going just fine!
Final Thoughts
Normally, I would often get frustrated when characters get close to one another but nothing comes of it. For some reason, I don’t feel any frustration with this series… at least not yet. I think the reason is that some other romance series are more blatant about when characters discover their feelings. You would often get those characters doing inner monologues like “Why do I feel this way?” “Could it be that I like her?” While we do have some of that here, it’s not as pronounced. It just feels more natural than anything.
Because the characters are slowly easing into things naturally, it feels more correct than forced/obvious. When it becomes too obvious, the reader will tend to get impatient as they wait and wait and wait for the couple to get together. Komura and Mie like each other, and that has become very apparent but even with both characters realizing it, the fears of confession, and the uneasiness of being sure about their feelings don’t feel forced. It’s more realistic and doesn’t try too hard to build unnecessary tension.
What I’m trying to say is that this romance series just feels a bit more mellow and because as such, you’re not wanting the characters to get together because you’re being strung along as a reader. Instead, you just feel compelled to be the spectator and just watch everything unfold. These kinds of build-ups are tremendous as they make the payoff for when they do get together all that much sweeter. I can’t wait for when it happens BUT… I do reserve a bit of caution because now that we are officially in the “I know I like him/her” territory, it is easy for the series to make that mistake of writing the characters in a way where it is blatantly obvious and cause that frustration that has been missing so far.
I hope it stays missing and it just continues on as it is but we will see.
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This item was purchased for review.
